Feeler

[f. FEEL v. + -ER¹.] One who or that which feels.

  1.  One who feels or perceives by the senses, esp. by the touch.

1526.  Pilgr. Perf. (W. de W., 1531), 258. The smellers or felers therof.

1611.  Shaks., Cymb., I. vi. 101.

1674.  N. Fairfax, A Treatise of the Bulk and Selvedge of the World, 47. All hearers deaf, no sounds nor dins; all feelers numb, nothing handlesom.

1840.  Tait’s Mag., VII. 706. I was one of the best feelers of a silk that ever entered Snuggs’ shop.

  2.  a. One who is the subject of feeling or emotion. † b. One who knows (anything) by his own feelings (obs.). c. One who experiences or has to bear (something disastrous or painful).

1611.  Wotton, Lett. to Sir E. Bacon, in Reliq. Wotton. (1672), 399. Of my longing to see you, I am a better feeler than a describer.

1779.  Johnson, Lett. to Mrs. Thrale, 8 Nov. If she be a feeler, I can bear a feeler as well as you.

1814.  Gen. P. Thompson, Exerc. (1842), IV. 24. We are to be the main feelers of the consequences, and not you; and therefore we think it possible, that you may have a less lively feeling of their importance than ourselves.

1870.  Lowell, Study Wind., 207. He [Thoreau] was not a strong thinker, but a sensitive feeler.

  3.  Biol. One of the organs with which certain animals are furnished, for trying by the touch objects with which they come in contact, or for searching for food; a palp.

1665.  Hooke, Microgr., 194. There are two other jointed and brisled horns, or feelers, in the forepart of the head.

1721.  R. Bradley, Wks. Nat., 55. Those Antenæ, or Feelers, which we observe in Lobsters.

1768.  G. White, Selborne, xviii. (1789), 52. The upper jaw [of the loach] … is surrounded with six feelers, three on each side.

1774.  Goldsm., Nat. Hist., VII. 327. The ant-lion seizes it with its feelers, which are hollow.

1843.  Owen, Invertebr. An., xiii. 155. The mouth [of the Cirripedia] is provided with a broad upper lip, with two palps or feelers.

1880.  W. B. Carpenter, The Deep Sea and Its Contents, in 19th Cent., No. 38, 617. The entire absence of sunlight on the deep-sea bottom seems to have the same effect as the darkness of caves, in reducing to a rudimentary condition the eyes of such of their inhabitants as fish and crustacea, which ordinarily enjoy visual power; and many of these are provided with enormously long and delicate feelers or hairs, in order that they may feel their way about with these, just as a blind man does with his stick.

  b.  transf. and fig.

1865.  Merivale, Rom. Emp., VIII. lxvi. 235. Her ships were the feelers with which she touched on Greece and Italy.

1874.  Blackie, Self-Culture, 69–1. So it is exactly with atheists, whether speculative or practical; they are mostly crotchet-mongers and puzzle-brains; fellows who spin silken ropes in which to strangle themselves; at most, mere reasoning machines, utterly devoid of every noble inspiration, whose leaden intellectual firmament has no heat and no colour, whose whole nature is exhausted in fostering a prim self-contained conceit about their petty knowledges, and who can, in fact, fasten their coarse feelers upon nothing but what they can finger, and classify, and tabulate, and dissect.

  c.  slang. That with which one feels; the hand.

1877.  W. H. Thomson, Five Years’ Penal Servitude, 259. In a week or two a man can bring his hooks and feelers into full working trim again and no mistake.

  4.  One sent out to ‘feel’ the enemy; a scout. Cf. FEEL v. 3 b.

1847.  Infantry Man. (1854), 105. These patrols must be preceded by feelers.

1876.  Voyle, A Military Dictionary (ed. 3), 135/2. Feelers.

  b.  transf. A proposal or hint put forth or thrown out in order to ascertain the opinions of others.

1830.  Gen. P. Thompson, Exerc. (1842), I. 287–8. The high church and the tories snuff the possibility of another revolutionary war; and it is with a view to obtaining something like a fair consideration of their project before it is too late, that notice is here taken of the feeler which they have put out.

1858.  Froude, Hist. Eng., III. xv. 273. Cromwell had thrown out feelers in the various European courts.

1886.  ‘Hugh Conway,’ Living or Dead, v. ‘It will cost a great deal if I fit them up as I like,’ I said as a feeler.

  attrib.  1889.  Pall Mall G., 30 May, 6/3. The project has gone no further than the feeler circular.

  c.  Racing. A trial race.

1883.  Standard, 21 May, 2/1. Osborne, journeyed from Manchester … with the express purpose of having a ‘feeler’ on Mr. Adrian’s colt.